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The feast of the Circumcision of the Lord and the feast of Saint Basil

21. January 2014 - 8:48

On the 1st/14th of January 2014, the Despotiki (of the Lord) feast of Christ’s circumcision by flesh, and of the memory of St Basil, Archbishop of Caesarea and Cappadocia, the ‘one disclosing heaven’, was celebrated during a nocturnal divine Liturgy at the Holy Sepulcher in the order of a Parreshia.

At 12:00 o’clock, midnight, His Beatitude Theophilos, Patriarch of Jerusalem, descended from the Patriarchate to the Church of the Resurrection accompanied by Hagiotaphite Fathers, and went on to lead the Matins at the Katholikon, and the Divine Liturgy in the Holy Sepulcher. Co-officiating were the Most Reverend Isychios, Metropolitan of Kapitolias; the Most Reverend Timotheos, Metropolitan of Vostroi; Their Eminences: Dorotheos, Archbishop of Avila; Aristarchos of Constantina; Theodosios of Sevastia and Demetrios of Lydda; Hieromonks, Hierodeacons, and the Archdeacon, f. Evlogios. A great crowd of different nationalities attended the service.

The Divine Liturgy was followed by a procession carrying the hand-relic of St Basil thrice around the Holy Sepulcher and the sites of pilgrimage.

Subsequently, His Beatitude proceeded to cut St Basil’s pie at the office of the Elder Sacristan, to the joy of everyone present, and of the one receiving the coin.

His Beatitude cut St Basil’s pie in the next morning too, for the Hagiotaphite Fathers, in the company of whom he went on to visit the Holy Monastery of St Basil near the New Gate for veneration, before being hosted to lunch in the monastic dining hall.